Course Objectives

This course will study the development of children's book illustration in the work of three masters of the twentieth century.  Students will analyze the picturebooks of Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel), Maurice Sendak and Peter Sis (rhymes with peace), considering the following questions:

1.       What is the concern for the aesthetic object? What decisions does the artist/author make to create a pleasing picture that may diverge from textual fidelity?

2.       What use does each illustrator make of history? (interpret 'history' in the broadest sense, including personal history, events within the larger world around him, a subject of study or field of knowledge, everything that can happen rather than things that can only be imagined.)

3.       Is there an overt concern for social context, an attempt to relate to contemporary history, or world events?

4.       Does the illustrator reflect or re-shape history? Does the artist attempt to retreat from history? How does the work of each illustrator reflect his own personal history?

5.       What audience does the illustrator address? Is it an audience of children, of children and adults working together, separate audiences of children and audiences, adults only, or perhaps, simply, himself?

6.       What psychological and/or emotional tasks does the illustrator/author pose for the reader? Does the illustrator/author work on multiple emotional or psychological levels?

7.       How does each author work out the relationship of image to text? How does text and image collaborate to tell a story? Are there meta-stories readers are free to make up for themselves?

8.       How does each author/illustrator investigate the relationship of the illustration to a linear narrative (story line)? Can it be always supportive, or does it sometimes become subversive, too? Is it always subversive? Can it be both in the same book--that is, can image and text collaborate on one level of meaning and challenge each other on another level of meaning?

9.       What is the mythos of each illustrator? Does his body of work attempt to create an intact, imaginary world? Are there significant, repeating design motifs, symbols, narratives that join the separate publications into a compelling organic whole? Are there perhaps competing myths within the artistic gestalt?

10.    Using the work of Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak and Peter Sis, consider, what are the effects of expectations on the creation and perception of a picture book? How, for example, does a picture expose the author/illustrator's expectations? How are the viewer's expectations addressed in a picture book illustration? How does each author/artist assume and play upon the viewer's expecTations? How are the reader's expectations exposed?

11.    Continuing the previous train of thought, what might we say is the relationship between art and expectation, both in children's perceptions and in our own? What part does 'stereotype' and 'archetype' play in how one derives sense and meaning from an image in a picture book? Are there positive and negative values engaged by our perception of the conventional, the familiar, and the too familiar?

12.   Using the work of Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak and Peter Sis as a field of inquiry, consider how one's culture conditions the way one looks at an image in a picture book.

Organization of the Course

Unit One (Week 1) - Introductions/Definitions: Imagination, Art, History

Unit Two (Weeks 2 and 3) - Art of Illustration: consideration of design elements, relation to narrative, use of medium, relation to art history, and brief comparison with contemporaries

Unit Three (Weeks 4 and 5) - Authority, Subversion and Hegemony: consideration of the figuration of authority figures, cultural and gender stereotypes, relationship of society to child

Unit Four (Weeks 6 and 7) - Landscapes, Technology, Inscapes: Referencing Thoreau's thoughts about environment as an "inner treasure," we will consider figuration of landscapes and technology as reflections of Self, and self as child, in society and in Universe.

Unit Five (Weeks 8 and 9) - Picture Book and Voice: Referencing Eliot's famous essay on voice, will consider whether texts for this chapter address a select audience; the world at large, or self. We will also consider voice within dramatic context and other uses of poetic voice.

Unit Six (Week 10) - TEAM PROJECTS ONE--Annotated Text (Three Golden Keys, or, Tibet: Through The Red Box

Unit Seven (Week 11) - TEAM PROJECTS TWO--Self, Family, Society

Unit Eight (Week 12)- TEAM PROJECTS THREE--Visual Analysis For Children

Unit Nine (Week 13)- TEAM PROJECTS FOUR--Images of Mayhem/Ideas of Order

Major Assignments

(1)  Participation in the threaded discussions is half of the final grade. Posts should demonstrate engagement with primary sources and some awareness of critical material, as well as an ability to formulate ideas and to exress them clearly.
(2)  The Team Project.  The final project should show effort, intelligence, some basic technological skills, an awareness of the needs of one's audience, and a sense of fun.

Content of Three Golden Keys or Tibet Team Project:  Choose either of these books and provide annotations, references to explain or clarify some of the many historical, geographical and cultural references given in the the illustrations.

Content of Self, Family, and Place Team Project:  Bruce Ronda said that self, family and place are the most important concerns in American children's literature. Using one of the formats below demonstrate how the author's (or authors') concerns for self and family form a significant aspect of their work.

Content of Visual Analysis for Children Team Project:  Show how you would help third graders understand what is distinctive and expressive in a particular illustrator's style, or how two or more different design elements (e.g., color, perspective, composition, line) are treated differently in the work of two or more illustrators.

Content of Images of Mayhem, Ideas of Order Team Project:  Every image of chaos or confusion implies an idea of order or containment (i.e., a bed piled to the ceiling with toys implies an idea of domestic tidiness, or a lake polluted with rubber tires and rusty cans implies an idea of ecological balance); choose twelve illustrations to show how Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak and/or Peter Sis exhibit attitudes about the balance of order and chaos, and relate these attitudes to the overall themes of their work.

Each Team must select a mode of presentation from the following formats:

·         Web Exhibition.  A web exhibition is like a museum exhibition.  It is a series of images organized around a certain theme.  Each image is identified and provided with a brief but pithy explanation of how it exemplifies an attribute of the overall theme.  You can create your own web exhibition by scanning images from the books we have studied and, using either html or a web editor such as Claris Homepage or Front Page, add labels to identify each image and provide the explanation for its meaning and relevance to the exhibition theme.

·         Interactive Exploration.  In this presentation mode, you provide a structure to help a student explore and learn about something. Your structure must stimulate active observable learning by requiring the student to write, draw, fill in graphic organizers, answer questions, or otherwise demonstrate learning in a concrete manner. With an interactive exploration you (the adult) create a webquest, scavenger hunt, art project, hyperstudio stack, or even just a series of questions that help the child to make careful observations and record them with writing or drawing.
Ideally, the interactive exploration encourages both simple concrete observation and higher order thinking (comparison, contrast, evaluation, and analysis).

·         Annotated Guide.  An annotated guide provides graphic and textual information to explain references in a book (either visual or textual). For example, if an illustration includes a famous building the annotation could identify the building, explain when it was built and why it is significant and perhaps also provide a photograph of the actual building (downloaded from the web). For an example of an annotated children's book, see The Annotated Charlotte's Web by Peter Neumeyer. If you choose this option, please provide between 10 and 20 annotations.

·         Unit Plan (series of lessons).  Break down your unit into manageable lessons. Each lesson should contain the following:

ü      Description of the student group (age, grade, approximate size of group, any special learning characteristics).

ü      An objective--this is a description of what the student learns.  "Students will read books"---is NOT an objective! It is an activity. "Students will learn how to read books"--IS an objective.
Activities to help the student learn what you want him or her to learn---should include active learning.

ü      Resources--copies of worksheets used or descriptions of items used in the activities.

ü      Evaluation--what you as a teacher do in order to ascertain whether or not the student has achieved the objective.

(3)  A response to another project, which should amplify the Project to which one is responding in a meaningful and interesting way.

Assessment

Participation in the threaded discussions:  50%
Team Project:  30%

Response:  20% 
Extra Credit: Up to 10% of extra credit is available to anyone who would like to do additional work to further class understanding. The details can be discussed between student and instructor, but some areas in which extra credit can be gained include adding relevant web documents to the Webliography or writing a brief paper relevant to one of the chapter themes. (This might mean doing an analysis of the treatment of landscape or the figuration of authority or the use of composition in one or more picture books). Your ideas are welcome here!

Required Texts

We recommend that you read or look at as many of the books by Seuss, Sendak, and Sis as you can. (Full bibliographies can be found in a number of places, including at different WWW sites. The Dictionary of Literary Biography bibliograpies are on "reading reserve" in the Course Webliography.)

(A)  Books by Dr. Seuss (Theodore Seuss Geisel)

And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street (New York: Vanguard Press, 1937; London: Country Life, 1939)

Bartholomew and the Oobleck (New York: Random House, 1949)

The Cat in the Hat (New York: Random House, 1957; London: Hutchinson, 1958)

The Cat in the Hat Comes Back! (New York: Beginner Books, 1958; London: Collins, 1961)

The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins (New York: Vanguard Press, 1938; London: Oxford University Press, 1940)

Green Eggs and Ham (New York: Beginner Books, 1960; London: Collins, 1962)

Horton Hatches the Egg (New York: Random House, 1940; London: Hamish Hamilton, 1942)

Horton Hears a Who! (New York: Random House, 1954)

The King's Stilts (New York: Random House, 1939; London: Hamish Hamilton, 1942)

The Lorax (New York: Random House, 1971; London: Collins, 1972)

McElligot's Pool (New York: Random House, 1947; London: Collins, 1975)

On Beyond Zebra (New York: Random House, 1955)

Thidwick, The Big-Hearted Moose (New York: Random House, 1948; London: Collins, 1968)

(B)  Books by Maurice Sendak

Hector Protector And As I Went Over the Water (New York: Harper & Row, 1965)

In the Night Kitchen (New York: Harper & Row, 1970)

The Nutshell Library (New York: Harper & Row, 1962; London & Glasgow: Collins, 1964)--
includes Alligators All Around, Chicken Soup with Rice, One Was Johnny, Pierre.

Outside Over There (New York: Harper & Row, 1981; London: Bodley Head, 1981)

We're All In The Dumps With Jack and Guy (New York: HarperCollins, 1993)

Where the Wild Things Are (New York: Harper & Row, 1963; London: Bodley Head, 1967)

BOOKS ILLUSTRATED

Robert Graves, The Big Green Book (New York: Crowell-Collier,1962)

Brothers Grimm, Dear Mili (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1988)

(C)  Books by Peter Sis

Follow The Dream: The Story of Christopher Columbus (New York: Knopf, 1991)

Physicist, Galileo Galilei (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1996)

Starry Messenger: A Book Depicting the Life of a Famous Scientist, Mathematician, Astronomer, Philosopher,

A Small Tall Tale From The Far Far North (New York: Knopf, 1993)

The Three Golden Keys (New York: Doubleday, 1994)

Tibet: Through The Red Box (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1999)

(D) Critical articles

GENERAL BACKGROUND

Lent, Blair, "There's Much More To The Picture Than Meets The Eye" in Baetor, Robert Signposts To Criticism of Children's Literature (Chicago: ALA, 1983) (Short, doesn't lapse into critical jargon and by an actual illustrator.)

Moebius, William. "Introduction to Picturebook Codes" in Word & Image 2.2 (April-June, 1986): 141-58.

Nodelman, Perry. Words About Pictures (Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1988): 101-124 (This chapter, "Code, Symbol, Gesture: The Contextual Meanings of Visual Objects," is particularly good.)

Schwarcz, Joseph. Ways of The Illustrator (Chicago: ALA, 1982)

ARTICLES ABOUT DR. SEUSS

Lebduska, Lisa. "Rethinking Human Need: Seuss's The Lorax" in Children's Literature Association Quarterly 19:4 (Winter 1994-1995)

Reimer, Mavis. "Dr. Seuss' Thee 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins: Of Hats and Kings" in Touchstones: Reflections On The Best In Childreen's Literature. Vol. 3, edited by Perry Nodelman (Children's Literature Association, 1989)

Spiegelman, Art. "Horton Hears A Heil" in The New Yorker (July 12, 1999)

Wolf, Tim. "Imagination, Rejection and Rescue: Current Themes In Dr. Seuss" in Children's Literature 23 (Yale University Press, 1995)

ARTICLES ABOUT MAURICE SENDAK

Ball, John Clement. "Max's Colonial Fantasy: Re-reading Sendak's Where The Wild Things Are" in Ariel: A Review of International English Literature 28:1 (Jan, 1997)

Bosmajian, Hamida. "Memory and Desire In The Landscapes of Sendak's Dear Mili" The Lion and The Unicorn 19:2 (Dec., 1995)

DeLuca, Geraldine. "Exploring The Levels of Childhood: The Allegory Sensibility of Maurice Sendak" in Children's Literature vol. 12 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984)

Jones, Raymond. "Maurice Sendak's Where The Wild Things Are: Picture Book Poetry." in Touchstones: Reflections On The Best In Children's Literature, vol. 3. (West Lafayette, Indiana: Children's Literature Association, 1989)

Kieling, Kara, Pollard, Scott. "Power, Food and Eating in Maurice Sendak and Hendrik Drescher: Where The Wild Things Are, In The Night Kitchen and The Boy Who Ate Around" in Children's Literature In Education 30:2 (June, 1999)

Kimmel, Eric A. "Children's Literature Without Children" in Children's Literature In Education 13:1 (Spring, 1982)

Mosley, Ann. "The Journey Through The 'Space In The Text' To Where The Wild Things Are" in Children's Literature In Education 19:2 (Summer, 1998)

Neumeyer, Peter F. "We Are All In The Dumps With Jack and Guy: Two Nursery Rhymes With Pictures by Maurice Sendak" in Children's Literature In Education 25: 1 (March, 1994)

Sendak, Maurice. "Caldecott Award Acceptance" in Newbery and Caldecott Medal Books, 1956-1965 (Boston: Hornbook, 1965)

Shaddock, Jennifer. "Where The Wild Things Are: Sendak's Journey Into The Heart of Darkness" in Children's Literature Association Quartlery 22: 4 (1997-98)

Sipe, Lawrence R. "The Private and Public Worlds of We Are All In The Dumps With Jack and Guy" in Children's Literature In Education 27:2 (June, 1996)

ARTICLES ABOUT PETER SIS

Joseph, Michael, Sak, Lida. "Interview With Peter Sis" in The Lion In The Unicorn 21 (1997)

Sis, Peter. "The Artist At Work" in Hornbook 68:6 (Nov.-Dec., 1992)